Sailing Courses, graffiti and the Italian Job…

Well I think we can establish that having the smart phone is not much facilitating my blog post frequency! If I’m out of the house, I spend the whole time looking furtively around for potential phone stealing thieves. Perhaps the novelty will wear off at some point and I’ll become less panicked about showing it in public. I’m gradually moving ahead, here’s an update:

Work over here: I had been considering that i could do the occasional day contracting to earn a bit of cash. Apparently I’d need to get myself set up on a self employed basis rather than going through my current contracting route which is a bit of a faff.

Tenancy Deposit Protection Scheme: On the flat leasing subject, if you’re leasing a property, the landlord needs to put the tenant’s deposit in an independent account. Alas, it does mean you can’t earn interest on it! I’ll use http://www.mydeposits.co.uk/landlords. You can register online and set it all up remotely. Seems to be pretty immediate so simply a case of finding someone who wants to rent and then setting it up.

Language School: I got in touch with the language school to ask about minimum notice to sign up. You need to give a months notice in order to get some decent accommodation. In the shared apartments, you just share with other students. I can do a month at the course but stay on another month to give me more leeway to find a flat a bit more long term. You can rent bedding if needed. I’ll see how much i can fit in my suitcase!

Giant boats and sailing courses: I went to the London Boat Show last week with a friend (thanks for coming Laura!). Apart from an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy at the end having walked around some of the biggest, most luxurious yachts I never knew existed (and they were just the ones you use to get to the REAL yachts!!), it was fab to get a chance to look around the more reasonably priced boats. Also very good to talk to some of the training course providers. Having initially been attracted to the foreign training courses, we spoke to one guy who said that you just don’t get the same experience in terms of tides as you do over in England so if you want to sail over here, then to do a course over here. Good advice I think! Anyway, I shall be doing my Day Skipper “Intensive” Theory course over the Easter weekend and then a week later, doing my Day Skipper practical. It’s with a small company called Nomad Sailing. They all highly recommended me doing a competent crew course first – which I’m er, not going to do. The beauty of this course is that apparently I can keep doing them until I eventually pass (perhaps this could be a cheap way of sailing?!?!) Anyway, the sailing plan is in full swing.

Italians: I made a friend on the tube! Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I forgot where I was, broke the acceptable “tube” behaviour and responded to a girl who asked if I was learning Italian (she wasn’t psychic, I was doing some Italian homework). Anyway, she helped me with my exercises and then gave me her email address. We’re meeting on Friday – very exciting. And I’m pleased to report that I could understand her emails without referring to the dictionary once! In other news – I’ve been on a graffiti course today and the tutor was Italian. He said my Italian was good (ha!). Perhaps I’m actually getting better. I’m loving graffiti by the way. I’m going to get me a wall. I’ll have to work out how I can make money from it (perhaps I can threaten to graffiti people’s walls unless they pay me?). Here’s the result of 15 minutes with rubbish colours…

Boring bits: To be clear, I’m not implying here that Tenancy Deposit Schemes are interesting… However, as a collection of other administrative type things, I did hear back from the pension people about what I’d need to do in order to ensure I keep my state pension <yawn>. I must read it. I’ll report back. I wonder where I filed it… I also heard back from Lambeth Council about notifying them of my move. I must read that again too.

I think there’s been other bits & pieces but can’t recall off hand! Anyway, ciao for now and sogni d’oro…